title: Bypassing the central bottleneck after single-task practice in the psychological refractory period paradigm: evidence for task automatization and greedy resource recruitment.
abstract: In this research, the controversial issue of whether the central bottleneck can be bypassed through task automatization was investigated. To examine this issue, participants received six single-task practice sessions with an auditory-vocal task (low vs. high pitch). We then assessed dual-task performance using the analytically tractable psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, in which the highly practiced auditory-vocal task was presented as Task 2, along with an unpracticed visual-manual Task 1. The results provide evidence of bottleneck bypass for virtually all the participants (17 out of 20). Several converging tests suggest that the bottleneck reemerged, however, in a follow-up experiment with tasks presented in the opposite order (auditory-vocal Task 1 and visual-manual Task 2). One possible explanation is that tasks greedily recruit central resources when available, even though they can operate without central resources when unavailable.
authors.affiliation: UFR STAPS de l'Université Paris-Sud, JE 2494, Bâtiment 335, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France. francois.maquestiaux@u-psud.fr
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Maquestiaux
authors.forename: Maude
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Laguë-Beauvais
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ruthruff
authors.forename: Louis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bherer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001332:Automatism / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012033:Refractory Period, Psychological; D012193:Reversal Learning; D014705:Verbal Behavior